Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home, or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign education, from contributing her help, and therefore set about working for Sam immediately. By working early and late, with perseverance, she did so much that the boy was shipped off at last, with more than half his linen ready. She could not conceive how they would have managed without her.

Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather missed, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town. And though spurning the weak remonstrances of Susan, he was beginning to be influenced by Fanny’s services and gentle persuasions. She found him the best of the three younger boys after he had gone. Tom and Charles were his juniors, still distant from that age of feeling and reason, and uninterested in making friends or being less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest impression on them. They were untameable. Every afternoon brought a return of their riotous games all over the house; and she very early learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday’s constant half-holiday.

Betsey, too, was a spoiled child, the alphabet her greatest enemy, left with the servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil of them—Fanny found it hard to love or help her. And of Susan’s temper she had many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance with Betsey, were very distressing to Fanny. She feared Susan might turn out far from amiable.

Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings.

On the contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates, its happy ways. The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquility of Mansfield, despite its deeply concealed unnatural Curse, were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day.

To the delicate and nervous Fanny, living in incessant noise was a harrowing evil that nothing could ameliorate. It was the greatest misery of all.

At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; everybody had their due importance; everybody’s feelings were consulted. If tenderness was wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place. And as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris (such as the most recent regular wartime in the shrubbery), they were short, trifling, as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode.